End of Nations is still happening, this time as a vehicular MOBA

“End of Nations is a tactical MOBA.” Er, hang on. It wasn’t always. Petroglyph’s free-to-play work-in-progress spent at least a year as an massively-multiplayer RTS before publishers Trion Worlds (them behind Rift) took it under their own developmental wing. For the past six months, it seems they’ve been refashioning EoN’s real-time tactical premise to bring it in line with the LoLs, Dotas and Infinite Crises of this world.

A new beta sign-up site has risen to the surface of the internet overnight. On it are the visogs of five common-or-garden RTS units - a neon whirlybird, a tracked tank, an orange Transformer, a winged APV, and some metal plates glued to an ambulance.

But what’s this? They’ve all been given fierce Marvel-style monikers: Sidewinder. Sluicegater. Decibel. Hippocrates. Colonel Boze. The Judge. I’ve made only one of those up, and it’s probably not the one you think.

All, incidentally, look like they might potentially chug-chug-chug their way between vehicular and humanoid forms - though that’s wholly speculatory on my part. Let’s have Trion do some of the explaining:

“End of Nations is a tactical MOBA where your success on the battlefield depends on the heroes and units you command and quick decision making in the heat of combat,” they write. “Dominate during team-based matches and catapult your commander to the top of the ranks.”

That certainly sounds like a MOBA. Which is a bit odd, because when Trion brought End of Nations in-house in December, they were all for building on Petroglyph’s existing work with a few extra licks of polish, some learning curve tweaks and a revamped UI. This appears to be an utterly different prospect, sharing only a free-to-play model with its namesake.

Are Trion wise to follow the widely-practiced way of the MOBA? Or is this yet another Zerg (nail) in the base (coffin) of the traditional RTS?

I hate MOBAs. I'm getting sick of them. They're clearly the next Call of Duty, in terms of that one "White Whale" genre that publishers look at and see dollar signs. Then shift all resources to throwing a contender in the ring against one or two giants and killing all their other IP's to fight a losing battle.

Trion; this was dumb. You're not going to beat Dota and LoL, and you shouldn't even try. You should stick to what you have and serve other demographics with quality entries in other genres. If you still had an MMORTS? That would be unique; you could have kept that healthy, and you could've had your own little World of Tanks-type solid performer that would be doing just fine.

I HATE it when publishers put all their eggs in one, theoretically profitable, basket. Did no CEO or exec pay attention to Activision when the Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero bubbles burst? Or how badly EA's doing because they destroyed all their IP's to chase Call of Duty and Gears of War with countless uninspired war games and third person action titles? UGH. I hope this fails, and I hope Trion learns a lesson about not being so stupid from it.

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